A Japanese factory that designs clothes on a 40-year-old computer [video]

Organizations tend to invest in their operations if there are significant improvements to be made. This includes things like dealing with problems such as the availability of cassetes, if the legacy system becomes too old to maintain in a cost effective way, if it's still possible to source parts, etc.

Digital systems are widespread because they are widespread and dirt cheap, and thus the tradeoff of increasing the complexity does add value.

They're still using modern computers, the simulation of what the actual fabric would look like was amazing and I'm sure when that old computer was new, they would've killed for something like that.

Unlike the fetishists of HN, I doubt that they romanticise their use of the old computer; it's simply the only one that works with their older equipment. You say it's "easy to maintain" but they'd still need a specialist to diagnose & fix, you can't take it to any computer repair shop. And getting certain parts would be an absolute nightmare as well. You say "everyone using the system is familiar with it" well duh...the sky is also blue, of course people that use it are familiar with it, but for an industry that is on the decline, trying to get fresh faces in to revitalise won't be helped by a computer that those fresh faces would never have even seen before. Power usage doesn't matter when the looms probably pulls tens of kilowatts or more anyway. But yeah, it is cool. Impractical, but cool and that rings true for everything that they're doing, small & bespoke manufacturing of traditional wear.

It's unfortunate, but a lot of boutique industries like this are dying in Japan at the moment.

Furthermore, it’s very common for factories to run older equipment because the cost of upgrading is higher, riskier, and shutting the factory down to do the upgrades comes with its own losses as well.

It’s also worth noting that there was also modern computers in that video too. The system they used to “digitally preview” what the weave would look like. But that is a separate system from the ones that interface with the weaving machines and thus very easy and cheap to upgrade.

This should be the top comment. Cost is a critical factor. I would also stop riding the bus and drive a Ferrari to work if that option costs as much as a bus ticket. As it doesn't then I'm going to stick with the bus, but this does not make it a superior choice.

For non-electronic parts: that's why you have a machine shop.

Maybe, maybe not. If the machine uses the right "legacy" parts (a Z80 is a great example, but so is anything belt- or gear-driven, etc.), then it's a very good bet those parts and the people who are familiar with them will remain available for much longer than you or I will be alive.

If you're not familiar with core memory, then look it up (it's cool). The industry borrowed a lot of women from the textiles industries to thread the tiny wires through the iron rings. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magnetic-core_memory

BTW, I see that the machine in the video has kanji legends on the keyboard, which isn't found on the models that were sold in Europe. The latter feature upper and lower-case characters, which is switched by a special "SML/CAP" key (not the SHIFT key, which is for graphics characters!), a key that shows kanji markings on the domestic model. (So, I guess, the original, domestic model was Latin upper-case/kanji without lower-case?) Does anyone know more about this?

I found the part about companies looking after the employee really interesting.

Having worked entirely in Europe, I've found most managers screwing over subordinates. I've encountered plenty of bully managers, never one who seemed to genuinely care.

Stepping back... having higher "productivity" or "GDP growth" does not make a cut-and-dry "winner". Everything is a trade-off.

It also depends on the price point you want to hit. Cotton is much less expensive than wool.

Vinyl and tape are also enjoyably tactile.

Indie acts have often gravitated towards CD-R rather than vinyl, because they can burn them at home in small quantities. But for mobile use, a walkman actually beats a discman, in my opinion, due to its smaller size. And, not being digital, cassettes have a kind of built-in "soft" DRM feature, in that reproduction is possible but goes hand-in-hand with a loss in quality. The mixtape / pirating / bootlegging scene helps spread the message about an act, and, if someone truly likes the music, they might go back to the original artist and buy an "official" prerecorded cassette where they get better sound quality, and a reasonable level of expectation that the money actually reaches the artist to support them.

With Spotify, for example, I have no idea, as a consumer, if I listen to a lot of small acts, how much of the money I pay every month to Spotify actually gets into the pockets of those acts, or whether they're just on there because they got arm-twisted into being on the platform because of platform power.

There's a lot that's good about the medium, and that goodness comes in the form of simplicity in engineering, which is a virtue in its own right.

The physical properties of tape make it much better for socializing than digital files or streaming services because it forces in-person interaction. That's what people were actually enjoying throughout the 20th century, we all just lived in a collective fantasy that it was music that people were after when it wasn't quite that after all.

In visual arts I think there is longer tradition of playing with the imperfections of the media instead of trying to hide them.

But ultimately, trying to reason about art has its limits, not everything can be understood (or at least enjoyed) rationally.

Cassette tape also have that crispy, muffed but hot and softly saturated sound. I also like sometimes to record my synthesizers direct to tape with a Yamaha MX4T (a 4-track cassette recorder).

For some genres that's the point. Most modern black metal is released on cassette tape, to achieve the desired black metal sound.

While I don't miss cassettes I do miss the rituals surrounding physical media. Being able to pick a thing, listen to it, and not being sold on other items.

They're used for special occasions, you can even get them printed on pretty paper and put in pretty envelopes.

https://www.denpoppo.com/

https://www.ntt-east.co.jp/dmail/

Wedding and funeral ceremonies often include a segment where someone reads aloud messages that have been delivered by telegram.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-japan-...

https://www.asahi.com/ajw/articles/13373419

Japanese are not lazy, they are one of the most capable people on the planet, but that also means they don't innovate or see the value of new inventions.

A great example is that in the west, we have specific kitchen tools for everything. An apple peeler, for example. Specifically to peel and only peel apples and only apples. Why? Because everyone's a lazy bastard.

But in Japan? One kitchen knife for everything. Yes, one single kitchen knife. For everything. Why? Because everyone is skilled with the kitchen knife to do anything and everything with it, so they don't need to innovate and invent apple peelers.

Or another great example: Japan started using telephones and then mobile phones and that was good enough for them. The west wanted even more convenience and invented smartphones.

As you put it, doing it the old fashioned way is "good enough" for Japan because they aren't lazy. They are both among the most advanced and regressive people on the planet.

You're probably right, but the actual software in only a small part of the process here. People have to go and manually cut the punch cards once produced for example, so it turns into an extremely slow and inefficient process overall.

That said, would they benefit from a years-long, 10 times over budget and bug riddled software renewal? Probably not.

Give it another decade or two and fax machines will be gone.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=YmfFHz2-uC8

I would imagine this kind of thing is tucked away in small shops all across the country.

That culture is actually starting to change, because that domestic rivalry/hostility has been the chief reason Japan lost the competition against American, South Korean, Taiwanese, and Chinese manufacturers in recent decades.

Can't fight on the world stage if you're busy fighting each other on home turf, y'know?

It's a difficult thing to quantify, but access to stable supply lines is surely worth more than zero.

In the lingo, business continuity and risk management. When, not if but when, the current system fails, there is high chance of it being unrecoverable. Even if it were technically recoverable, can they find someone to do that work? How long will the factory stand still while the system is being recovered or replaced? In general it is more cost-effective to replace things before they fail rather than after the fact. Doubly so in these sort of cases where using the old system (in working state!) as a reference would most likely be beneficial.

I mean, probably any UNIX program written in C? Bill Joy vi can run on modern computers. What makes this software substantially different than a text editor?